DutchNews, April 30, 2015
When Jozias van Aartsen, the mayor of The
Hague, unveiled the Munirpad (Munir Path) in a quiet neighbourhood on April 14,
he did more than honour the slain Indonesian human rights defender Munir
Thalib, writes Andreas Harsono of Human Rights Watch.
The naming of the
Munirpad was also an uncomfortable reminder to the Indonesian government of its
failure to bring to justice those who had ordered Munir’s killing on September
7, 2004.
Munir’s widow, Suciwati, told reporters before she left Jakarta to
attend the ceremony: ‘It’s ironic when
the Netherlands recognises [Munir’s] achievement, but Indonesia, his own
country, gives impunity to the perpetrators [of his murder].’
Sceptical
Suciwati has reason to be sceptical about the Indonesian government’s
commitment to fully investigate Munir’s murder. Despite former Indonesian
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s promise in 2004 that finding Munir’s
killers was ‘the test of our history,’ the government has failed to do so.
There is certainly no shortage of possible suspects. As Indonesia’s best-known
human rights defender, Munir made many powerful enemies among people with
abusive records.
Munir founded the highly effective Commission for Disappeared
Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) to campaign against enforced
disappearances. In 2002, Munir established the Jakarta-based human rights
research group Imparsial.
Passion
Underlying all of Munir’s work was a
passionate pursuit of justice in a country whose three decades of authoritarian
rule under Suharto had run roughshod over the rule of law and permitted the
killers of more than 500,000 alleged ‘communists’ in 1965-66 to avoid
prosecution for their heinous crimes.
But that activism ended when Munir died
from arsenic poisoning. The arsenic was allegedly added to his orange juice on
a Garuda Indonesia flight from Jakarta to Amsterdam. An Indonesian police
investigation resulted in the conviction of three Garuda employees.
On December
20, 2005, a Jakarta court sentenced an off-duty Garuda pilot, Pollycarpus
Budihari Priyanto, who had moved Munir from economy to business class, to 14
years in prison for administering the
arsenic. Pollycarpus was released on parole in 2014.
An Indonesian court
subsequently sentenced Indra Setiawan, Garuda’s then chief executive officer,
and Rohanil Aini, Garuda’s then chief secretary, to one year jail terms for
producing falsified documents that let Pollycarpus get on that flight.
Evidence
Despite those convictions, there is troubling evidence that the prosecutions of
those three Garuda staff failed to uncover the full circumstances of Munir’s
killing and that the masterminds remain at large.
Sceptics point to the fact
that Pollycarpus was also an agent for the State Intelligence Agency (Badan
Intelijen Negara, or BIN). Despite allegations that linked the order for
Munir’s murder to the agency’s former deputy director, major general Muchdi
Purwopranjono, an Indonesian court cleared him of responsibility in Munir’s
killing in December 2008 due to lack of evidence after trial proceedings dogged
by allegations of witness intimidation.
Activists have alleged that the
government withheld key evidence during the trial, including recorded mobile
phone conversations between Muchdi and Pollycarpus.
Hampered
In September 2009,
Human Rights Watch said that the evidence presented during the Muchdi trial was
compelling, but that the prosecution was hampered by the systematic retraction
of sworn statements to the police and pressure on the South Jakarta court from
Muchdi’s supporters.
Witnesses withdrew statements they had made to the police,
claiming to have forgotten basic facts, or failed to appear in court. Most were
former or current intelligence officers or retired members of the military.
Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo has an opportunity to correct the failure of
his predecessor, Yudhoyono, to investigate Munir’s killing adequately. The
president could start by ordering the National Police to surrender any evidence
withheld or overlooked during the trials of both Pollycarpus and Muchdi, as
well as investigating allegations of witness intimidation related to the
dismissal of charges against Muchdi in 2008.
If Widodo fails to act, the
Munirpad in The Hague will remain a reminder of the long road to justice for
Indonesia’s murdered rights defender Munir.
Andreas Harsono is Indonesia
researcher at Human Rights Watch.
.
Related Articles:
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Munir Said
Thalib, center, his wife Suciwati, left, and an unidentified staff member of
the
Indonesian Human Rights Monitor (Imparsial), moments before the human rights
defender
boarded a flight on Garuda Indonesia on Sept. 6, 2004. (Photo courtesy
of Imparsial)
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